Category: Spring? –

Monday, May 4th, 2020 – And The Last Snow & Ice In Our Yard has melted

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Monday, May 4th, 2020 —> +7˚C / +45˚F with very light rain falling @ 6:45 am on Kent State Massacre Day & “May The Fourth Be With You Day” –

2020-05-04_615am = No Snow Anywhere In our yard

– Looking toward what Cathi Christened our “Outdoor Zen Corner” – Which has always been the last refuge of the previous winter’s snow and ice – Yesterday’s rain melted all that was left. 🙂 –

— Yup, there has always been a little bit of snow and ice in the corner of the stone wall behind our outdoor fireplace – right up until Mother’s Day – It looks like this year the snow and ice are gone a week early. { Or maybe I should cross my fingers and hope we don’t get several inches between now and next Sunday. }

* * * * *

—> And this from my friend, Doug:

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“— In the Schnarr news department – I don’t know which news magazine it was, but my sweetie was watching something on CBS television – and I caught a little bit of a report on a rural health care crisis in Texas – I don’t remember which county the reporter was in – but I do remember she said it was about an hour and a half north of Houston. —> One Texan Doctor explained that they used to be able to get surgical masks for six cents each, but lately they have to pay one dollar and twenty cents for each mask they get. { I don’t know – would the punishment fit the crime if anybody gouging prices on critically needed medical stuff like surgical masks during a pandemic would be sentenced to be castrated and maybe even vivisected on national television? I betcha the people who are trying to make a ‘killing’ like this are in for one heck of a rude awakening when they find out that no, unless they have wasted their nervous system completely – they will have a conscious after-life  — and they will have to face the consequences of actions like unjustifiably raising prices —> how many thousand percent??? —> The best information I have received on my life-long search for Religious Truth is, “Nobody really has to spend eternity in Hell, but every second they do spend there feels like eternity.” }

“— Sorry about delivering bad news – and I had to ask myself if I am being as non-judgmental as possible. Ya know, can I forgive somebody like Hitler? { Who supposedly was Attila the Hun in a previous incarnation } can I forgive somebody who believes they have a right to capitalize on the intense suffering of thousands of people?  I can try – but that’s going to be really, really hard. Turn the other cheek? Well maybe, but I remember reading something in an in depth interpretation of my natal horoscope that read, “With this aspect, anything you say with conviction will stay with the person you tell it to – no matter how hard they try to deny it -” So yeah, maybe I will turn the other cheek and decide not to spend my life trying to sink to the level of pure evil and go on a holy crusade to get even. But I will tell them that they’re not going to enjoy what’s coming to them as a consequence of their greed and deluded belief that they have a right to do something like this.

“— Maybe I shouldn’t sign this, but if you’re reading this, you know who I am.” ( Douglas Jay Otterson )

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— Um, May the Fourth Be With You?

~~~~~ Jim

 

Saturday, April 11th, 2020 – Waitin On Spring —

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– Saturday, April 11th, 2020 —> Bright sun shining & ‘Partly Cloudy’ @ 8:25 am in Atlantic Canada —

Interesting play of light and shadow- snowy yard through a semi dark porch window.

– “Interesting play of light and shadow – Sun rays on snow framed by a semi-dark porch window” –

— Let’s see, the shadowed plants — in the center is an olive tree and to the right is a pot with what Costco called a ‘Money Tree’ – { – Often said we should pick up a money tree on our next shopping trip. Lately the new rules say that only one family member at a time should do the shopping. Since I’m closer to the age-defined danger zone – Cathi’s been the designated shopper. }

— In the “Bad News” Department – South Korea reported yesterday that 91 people who had gotten over their cases of CoVid-19 —> And tested negative and were allowed to resume their normal lives – were tested again and their results were positive again. —> Late night radio – in either cutting edge hard science interviews or fringe-like conspiracy researchers —> One of the ‘Remote Viewing’ US Intelligence Operatives’ trainers from as far back as the 1980’s and “Looking for and finding the extremist Iranian Evangelical Islamic Revolutionaries’ American Hostages” operations —> And Uri Geller — an Israeli Intelligence Officer who kept himself alive by allowing the media to portray him as a “Woo Woo” entertainer who could hypnotize participants in Las Vegas-like stage shows – but had a really good ‘Batting Average’ as a legitimate ‘psychic spy’ —> On separate nights reported to a late night host who is a bit of a chameleon and seems to be whole heartedly in the camp of whomever he is interviewing at any given moment – but who {that host} seems to believe the CoVid-19 Pandemic is more hoax that reality —> Both the ‘scientific remote viewing’ trainer and the ‘Psychic Spy’ reported that their latest information is that this virus will not go away nicely but will rebound – & transform itself into something more aggressive than it was in its first round of attacks… Um – ‘Social Distancing’ and a whole different look to our economic system in the near future —> may be here to stay. & if the guys behind “CAFR1.com” are right – the ‘Fiat’ / Voodoo Economics system may be experiencing a painful death as we watch and wonder how the bleep we come through this with a whole new understanding of how the universe and the human race survived for the last eleven million years on this planet – despite the efforts of evil, controlling, manipulating, power-mad men to destroy all evidence that anything happened here before maybe 4,000 BC. —> { Don’t take my word for this – Go prove or disprove it for yourself. God did not give you a brain so you could rely solely on corporate main stream media to explain your ‘Reality’ in terms that allow them to maintain total control over you. }

— There was a 5.2 Earthquake on the border between California and Nevada – That made the news ‘Crawl’ on at least one Canadian Network News Channel.

— Hang on a bit, I don’t want to leave after only giving you bad news.

— Well – the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy have been declared to be ‘Essential Workers’ – So they won’t be arrested for breaking curfew.

— Sigh, —> And if I come up with anything really positive, I’ll let you know –

 

~~~~~ Jim

Tuesday, April 7th, 2020 –

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– Tuesday, April 7th, 2020 —> -3˚C / +27˚F —> partly cloudy & ‘hopeful’ @ 8:01 am in Atlantic Canada on my Aunt Claudia’s Birthday —> which she shares with Janis Ian and I believe it’s Jenny Dines’ birthday too – & the Canadian Dollar is up a penny against the US dollar – valued at 71.3 cents U$ at 8:00 am –

- Sunrise @ 7:10 am -

– Sunrise @ 7:10 am here in our neck of the woods – Snow is melting and instead of the usual big snow storm on Cathi’s birthday, last Friday – we got a lot of rain. But – The weather people assure us that we might get something like 8 to 10 inches of snow this coming Friday to make up for that – Nice of them to make sure that nobody calls the love of my life a liar when she says there’s always a significant snow storm right around her birthday –

— Opened my eyes at 6:49 am this morning – and noticed that it was already getting light enough to look around outside – which gives us a bit of hope that Spring might actually find us this year —

— I couldn’t stomach any more news about the latest b.s. on the news about d.j. frump seizing shipments of protective equipment paid for by Canadian Health Officials and trying to keep it for himself as part of his maneuvering for re-election down south in the smoke and delusions of grandeur that appear to be rampant —> and went to netflix to binge on the second season of the newest version of “Lost In Space” and then dreamed an extension of the theme that earthlings are racing to escape the planet they poisoned by allowing the greedy to get away with their fracking and destroying rain forests and wrecking pristine prairie lands to dig up shale oil in what a lot of people are calling ‘Tar Sands’ – Gack.

— But anyway, thinking about the struggle between ‘tree huggers’ and psychopathic, narcissistic, power tripping, ‘beedy grastards’ left me feeling sick before I managed to fall asleep and the promise of a new sunrise made me feel like there just might be hope for the human race after all…

— let me go take a couple pills that might upset my stomach without affecting my state of mind, and chill as far away from the television news channels as I can get –

— My intuition says we will get through this nonsense as long as we don’t believe a word the people in power are spitting at us.

————— xoxoxoxo,

~~~~~ Jim

Weather Report?

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Sunday, March 29th, 2020 —> +6˚C / +43˚F – Dark and cloudy and warm? @ 8:44 pm –

Snow melting back in a driveway -

– @ 7:15 pm Saturday – our driveway looked like this –

— Cathi was in the living room, watching television, when suddenly laughed, and appeared in the doorway to my ‘office’ – She said, “Guess what? They’re calling for twenty centimeters of snow on Monday.” { Twenty centimeters is about 8 inches in the measurements I grew up with. – I took the above photo, thinking this might be the ‘Before’ shot –

— Tonight the weather network believes we might get one centimeter of snow over night. So, maybe we’re not about to get snowed under?

~~~~~ Jim

Outside, The Wind Is Howling

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Saturday, March 21st, 2020 —> -1˚C / +29˚F with mostly blue skies and just a bit of fuzzy grey haze here and there – & Every couple minutes a blast of north wind rattles the windows and shakes the tarp covering the open doorway to our woodshed – March winds it is on Jeremy Charbonneau’s birthday here in Canada @ 9:55 am Atlantic Time —

Tweets from Harry Forestall & Elizabeth May

– Harry Forestall is a veteran CBC News Reporter in New Brunswick – Elizabeth May has been the Head of the Federal Green Party in Canada since she was the first Green Party Candidate elected to the Federal Parliament a while back. –

— The link from Harry’s tweet won’t work here – a reporter for NBC News thought he was giving DJ Frump an opportunity to brag about all the good things he’s doing to fight the ‘pandemic’ – The USA’s pResident in the white house pointed his finger at the reporter, said he was a very bad reporter spreading fear and sensationalism, and said that NBC and Comcast were not doing legitimate reporting { Because they’re not cheerleading every word Trump Tweets? Not leading the charge to canonize him? } and then blasted him again.

— Elizabeth May was the first Green Party candidate elected to the Federal Parliament up here in Canada – & while lots of people want to protect the planet from greedy oil barons – & believe that oil and gas should stay in the ground, and fracking should be a capital crime – & those oil barons know that oil renews itself, but harms the atmosphere and ruins people’s health, they want to continue to get rich by fleecing the public, crying ‘peak oil’ and like it says above – they pocketed more than $15 billion U$ dollars in profit last year AND received tons of corporate welfare from the Government of Canada – AND sold their Alberta to the West Coast pipeline project to the Government of Canada for more Billions of dollars  —> Politicians everywhere have drunk the kool-aid and preach the gospel of protecting jobs while we know that the renewable energy movement provides something like 10 times more jobs than the oil and gas industries do —> Okay – so politicians have been bought, and probably believe the b.s. they’ve been told, and now they want to continue to grab tax money from us while they do their damnedest to protect the morons who are hell-bent on wrecking our planet and poisoning our atmosphere. Well —> Schnarr on them!

Tweet explaining intelligence versus donald j trump

– A tweet from John Cleese of Monty Python fame –

— John Cleese – planet Earth’s Minister of Silly Walks and alumnus of Monty Python has had something to do with Cornell University in Ithaca, New York recently — and hints that maybe you need to have the intelligence of a slug, the imagination of a jelly fish and the sophistication of a bullied second grader to believe that Donald J Trump is on the right track and/or knows what he’s doing.

* * * * *

— Our drug store up here has wide yellow taped lines – six feet apart – on the floor in an aisle heading for the pharmacy ‘Pick Up’ counter – There are signs near those yellow lines explaining that – if you’re in line to pick up medicine – you should be at least six feet away from anybody ahead or behind you.

— Last night on the CNBC news channel one guy interviewed a retired General who had a big part in guarding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina – the general was explaining why it’s a good thing to call up the National Guard in 27 of the USA’s 50 states to make sure that enough M.A.S.H. type field hospitals can be slapped together to deal with the pandemic. The host noted that Trump had called the pandemic ‘Fake News’ before ‘the fit hit the shan’ – and I think it was the next host on her program showed interviews with New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo – and others who said that when Trump told ‘his faithful’ that the US Navy’s hospital ship would be in New York City’s harbor in less than a week – his Trump-ness was full of something stinky and full of evil bacteria.

— Oregon and Washington State have given up trying to believe that the US Federal Government will do anything useful for them and have begun buying, leasing, and/or commandeering large buildings and sports stadiums where they are full speed ahead putting emergency field hospitals in place. Oregon wants to add 1,000 beds ( some of which would be in intensive care units ) and Washington State wants to have 3,000 new hospital beds ready to deal with the rising tide of covid-19 patients. There was some difference of opinion as to whether the emergency field hospitals would be for virus patients, or a place to stash non-virus patients to make room inside the real hospitals for the virus patients.

— & while I don’t even want to go near a news network channel to be bombarded with more and more stuff about this new form of ‘Yellow Peril’ – I have noticed that a lot of people believe the whole issue is ‘Fake News’ —> maybe an equal number of people believe we’re not taking this seriously enough.

— Shrug, maybe we need somebody with George Carlin’s attitude to come along, look at us with a weird smile, nod and say, “I can’t wait until we can sit down over a glass of wine and have a good laugh about this -”

In a flooded town, only the top line of a sign is visible.

– This was a response to Dan Rather’s tweet –

— & yes, the above photo was tweeted in response to Dan Rather’s tweet – which I suppose is equivalent to, “Now that the barn is nothing but cinders and all our horses and cows are dead, maybe we should open the barn’s steel doors -”

Support living wages

– Yeah –

~~~~~ ehhhh —

~~~~~ Jim

2020-03-13 -Latest Beginning of my Novel in progress –

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Friday – March 13th, 2020 – -5ºC / +23 F – –> Cloudy and ‘promising’ a mess of mixed precipitation in Atlantic Canada @ 8:37 am —> coincidentally on Dana Delany’s birthday – She played Nurse Colleen McMurphy on China Beach —

 

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– In Search of a “Normal” Life –

– by Jim Wellington

 

 

1.) “Don’t try to make sense -”

{ Here Beginneth this tangled tale: }

“Don’t try to make sense of any of this while you’re here – Your normal brain can’t do that. You’ll end up constantly brain-fried and confused – and you’ll probably walk right into a booby trap – This is a war zone, dude – ya gotta learn to follow your gut – and if you do that – ya just might survive this shit storm – maybe you can try to make sense of it later -” — Lance Corporal “Black Jack” – [ Albert Oliver Wilson Walker ] —> Advice he gave to Draelen Andrusen to help him celebrate living through the first few hours of the Tet Offensive, Near Dak-To, Viet Nam, January 28th, 1968… Draelen’s first full day ‘in country’.

If this was a movie, we’d begin with something like this:

It begins with a freakin’ beautiful sunrise in a paradise – Mountains, tropical flowers in bloom – Waterfalls – pools of calm water reflecting sky and the most colourful flowers you can imagine while children of all colours, sizes and shapes run around, squealing with delight – many of them splashing in shallow water while mothers wearing colourful Hawaiian rap-around silk or light cotton ‘dress’ smile and keep their eyes on their kids.

The camera suddenly shoots back away from this idyllic scene – zooms away through clouds and out into space, then pans down with dizzying speed, zooms forward, shoots straight at another blue planet, shrouded in clouds and pans around through daybreak on one side of the world, nightfall on the other side, then backtracks just a bit – and zooms down through clouds to what looks a little like South East Asia as a tiny flight of B-52’s in formation lets go of dozens – then hundreds of bombs – and we follow those bombs down until hundreds of firey explosions shock us and shake the world.

The fire and smoke rises to form a blood red caption that fills the screen: “Hanoi, North Viet-Nam – 1970”

The letters grow, then disperse, leaving only “1970” readable –

Then the ’70’ rolls back to “December, 1969” which remains in the center of the big screen as the camera pans down southward slowly enough for December to roll back to November and November becomes October and October becomes September and then the months roll back more quickly and stop on “February, 168” – then the date becomes smoky and disperses as the camera finds half a dozen Bell – Huey helicopters. The music starts quietly –

The helicopters are not flying in formation above the jungle, they are moving sideways, tipping left and right, darting out and turning in wide arcs, darting back. As the music becomes recognizable to baby boomers, it almost appears that the helicopters are dancing.

Behind the Hueys that you recognize from possibly too many images of the Viet-Nam ‘Police Action’ are five ‘Cobra’ – Helicopter gun-ships – loaded ‘to the gills’ with rockets and ‘gatling guns’.

The Cobras are in formation, flying just far enough back so any ‘enemy combatants’ who open fire on the Hueys ahead of them should be in for one hell of a surprise.

The music becomes louder – You might begin to recognize “Kansas” by Melanie { Melanie Safka for those of you ‘fortunate enough’ to have been born a millennial }.

(1.a) – WAR

“Toto Stop Your Barkin’ – Cause – We’re Not In Kansas No More-”

March 9th, 2020 —> What You’re Missing In Warmer Climates —>

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Monday, March 9th, 2020 —> 0˚C / +32˚F -very grey and cloudy @ 12:55 pm on, I believe, Jean Cippolini’s Birthday – { SP? } —> here in Atlantic Canada —

Chunks of snow -

– Chunks of snow looking like fallen pillars from the ruins of a Greek Temple? –

— This shows the effects of snow followed by rain, followed by freezing – followed by human efforts to chop through very ornery hard stinkin’ snow banks. Cathi did this, I was not able to attempt to get up, go out and help her – 🙁 —

Effects of wicked wind -

– And then we had a wind storm — We are not complaining. Other Canadians were clobbered with incredible amounts of snow. –

— I think the temperature was 0˚C – and the wind chill was more like -20˚C – { Translation: 32˚F with a wind chill or -4˚F } The wind kicked up lots of sand and other flotsum, and blew a lot of pieces of leaves, pine needles, and even bits of tree bark around.

Driveway under ice, salt & sand.

– And this is a shot of our driveway – after a lot of snow and rain and freezing rain and Ice pellets { sleet? } and thawing and freezing and then large doses of salt and sand –

— And – if that’s not scary enough ….

Our Street - At about 9:10 am March 9th, 2020

– Garbage Day in our humble neck of the frozen north. Please note that half the road is covered in ice that melts by day and refreezes by night. There’s a turn that could send anybody who loses control due to ice conditions – into our friendly neighbourhood utility pole. –

— Yup, if you’re a big fan of ‘white knuckle driving’ – come pay us a visit during the worst of any winter. This might just be any adrenaline junkies’ vision of heaven on Earth.

Ice bank and sanded driveway.

– We have had to chop the top off the pile of snow and now hard ice several times to get it down to what you might be able to see on the left side of this photo – to give Cathi a chance to see where she’s going if and when she leaves the driveway. Thanks to our wood stove and I think a cord and a half of split hardwood – the house is as nice and cozy inside as it might look here – unless you’re really pissed off since you learned that Canadians do not live in igloos. –

— Yeah, I’m becoming allergic to the teevee news lately – But Jess Jackson did endorse Bernie Sanders – Wow.

Kameron+Kaelyn with a green morning fog

– On a brighter front – Whattaya do when the weather conspires to keep you inside? I build game words – This is Kameron the “Ottarian” and Kaelyn, the half elf half Ottarian. marvelling at a greenish morning fog in Cavendish area –

— “Ottarians” believe they evolved from playful river otters. They have smallish claws that allow them to pick most locks with ease and they have no concept of private property, but they are nurturing and helpful and want to share everything that ‘follows them home’ with anybody who might like it. When the weather in “Aerendel” – my game world – became warmer, Kaelyn got rid of her bard boots and ran around barefoot.

Jessicka witnessing a strange sunrise

– One of the pitfalls we encounter while building 3D game worlds is sometimes landscapes decide to unravel – Here “Jessicka” has been taken slightly aback when sunrise over Ridgefield revealed a piece of a mountain that came unglued – and threatened to float away. –

— Very solid looking landscapes are actually two dimensional, and from the wrong side of a mountain, your mountain is pretty much invisible. You can tell water to be reflective on both sides of its surface, but if you want to build a cave, you need to have an extra layer of stone veneer and flip it upside down, then very carefully check and recheck to make sure the interior of the cave’s ceiling is completely inside the mountain’s { or whatever’s -} exterior dimensions.

"TaleRocker" the bard - discovered a castle that roams around the landscape.

– One of the core principals that formed the basic weird properties of the Aerendel Universe – is the ‘myth’ that an early resident of that universe thought that the forces of evil were about to destroy all of creation for the plus-perfect hell of it -then,  and with the aid of her trusted closest friends, using their arch-angelic creative powers – fashioned an ‘Anomaly’ – a cave that bridged all limits of time and space, and gave that anomaly a bit of sentience so it could find and rescue innocent creatures about to be murdered by bad guys and lead them back in time to before the bad guys went bad. –

— Maybe this should have been the caption and the caption should have been here? —> TaleRocker the Bard has discovered that the rumours of a Castle that appears and disappears at random times in odd places is actually true – and if that’s true – then maybe the rumours of a sentient anomaly protecting the innocent on this world are also true —? Hmmmm —

Rachel and Laery in Easlynne-

– Rachel is DJ Otterson’s daughter’s avatar. Just to confuse you – DJ’s daughter’s name really is Rachel. An earlier version of this avatar looked a little bit more like Rachel, but Rachel the human played with the face and body ‘morphing’ routines and believes this version of herself looks like she is proabably more fun to hang around with. – ‘Laerry’ is Rachel’s husband’s avatar. His ‘real world’ name is not Laerry – and his ears ‘in real life’ do not have elvish points. –

— I could bomb you with several more screen shots from our game world, but that might slow down your load time beyond ‘reasonable’ – I really like Rachel’s latest version of herself. I don’t think I’d buy a used car from her, but she does look like she’d be fun to hang around with.

* * * * *

— And now, the more or less ‘important’ news of the ‘real world’ …

— The price of a barrel of oil fell to $30.00 U$ over night. Will this convince any greedy oil barons to give up and invest exclusively in renewable resources? Probably not.

— The last time I gritted my teeth and took a peek at one of our news channels, the Dow Jones was down more than 1,800 points this morning.

— Ya want a Conspiracy Theory to chew on? —> If the puppeteers who are pulling Donald J Trump’s strings { So expertly and so subtly that he doesn’t even know he’s being played? } are actively trying to destroy – not just the U$A’s economy, but that of the entire world – What the bleep do they believe they can gain from that? Revenge for all the dirty tricks the C.I.A. pulled on our trusting allies? And if you add the Coronavirus to this mix – if some of the people I’ve heard on late night radio are right and the ‘Red Chinese’ are orchestrating the downfall of ‘Western Culture’ as part of their 50 year plan to become the sole power on this planet – How could they have allowed one of their own people to let a cat out of their top secret facility where they supposedly weaponized this virus for future use against their enemies, real and/or imagined? One possibly goofy theory I heard was that Bill Gates is behind this pandemic – trying to reduce the population of earth down to a nice manageable size so the soul-less elites can control everybody. But then somebody else wondered if we’d have to wait for half of those elites to drop dead from the virus before anybody admitted they might have a problem.

— I think I’ll go listen to Melanie { Savka? Safka? }  singing “Glory, Glory Pyschotherapy -” and laugh myself back to sleep.

–— “Toto stop your barking, we’re not in Kansas no more -” {{{ Thank you Melanie!  }}}

— Have a nice life, people —

— xoxoxoxo { Merry old philosopher: } Jim

June 9, 2019 – The Controversy Over Drug Prices and { not quite } Universal Health Care –

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Sunday, June 9th, 2019 – +23˚C / +74˚F under slightly steel greyed blue skies & ‘clear’ in Atlantic Canada @ 1:00 pm –

— People are dying because they can’t afford their medications and “Big Pharma” is hiding the cost of producing those medications and blocking attempts to speed the process of allowing generic drugs at a fraction of their “Corporate Protected” price rigging schemes. – And not just in Canada – but world wide.

– Photo from a tweet by the Baltimore Sun “Maryland joins multi-state lawsuit alleging generic price fixing” –

— First: a bunch of links:

— From The Washington Post: “Generic drug price-fixing expands to 300 drugs and 16 companies” <— This one has a very long url.

— This is from the CBC – an article concerning eye drops: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/eyedrop-waste-solution-1.5166985

— From The New Republic – “Big Pharma is pushing Big Lies”

— From Tarbell dot org : “Rigged Drug Prices at Pharmacies and Hospitals” –  { & “America’s Broken Drug Supply Chain: What You Can Do” is below the lead article.

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— From 1995 until early 2002 I volunteered at WPKN FM { 89.5 FM in Bridgeport, Connecticut } where I served as the recording engineer for “Health Care in Mind” and “Progressive Voices” – call out shows hosted by Dr John Battista – a psychiatrist who had become active in trying to bring affordable health care to the state of Connecticut { – USA – just in case this article survives Donald J Trump’s administration and the U.S.A. doesn’t. } I was also the Director of Public Services for at least one year – screening PSA material to be sure that things submitted to the non-profit community based radio station for approval and airing as Public Service Announcements were not thinly disguised ads for commercial ventures.

— But the point is – Dr John Battista had done a lot of research and discovered that the State of Connecticut could save over One Billion US dollars a year if it went to a single payer Health Plan like that of Canada, The United Kingdom, and other highly civilized ‘Western’ nations.

— The Connecticut legislature became very interested in the Doctor’s research and several progressive Representatives asked him to bring a copy of his research to the General Assembly and testify about his research and his findings. The way the debate on this issue went – Friendly Representatives kept running back and forth from the floor of the General Assembly to where Dr Battista was waiting with encouraging messages, “Don’t give up – We’ll be up soon -” until around three a.m. when his disheartened allies from the General Assembly came to him and delivered the news – “We’re dead in the water – The state’s insurance lobby just killed us.”

— Dr Battista then became more and more politically active – joined the Connecticut Green Party and changed the focus of “Health Care In Mind” from what had been a patient advocacy themed show to bring on more and more progressive activists of all stripes to talk about health issues with a progressive slant. He also submitted a proposal for “Progressive Voices” – another call-out interview program that widened its scope to include all kinds of Progressive Issues. { I still have CD copies of half hour programs in which he interviewed Progressive Connecticut Representatives and an Attorney General who told us that one of his favorite triumphs was getting the state of New York to reimburse Connecticut drivers for fines they levied for not having current inspection stickers on their windshields when Connecticut had gone to a less rigorous program of inspecting exhaust systems with older vehicles exempt from needing to pass the same standards as newer vehicles, while New York State law insisted the whole vehicle be inspected and vehicles that did not pass had a short time to fix whatever caused the failure or be taken off the road.

— I also read an article in a Yale Alumni magazine that was lying in the waiting room at the West Haven Connecticut Veteran’s Hospital while my father was being treated in an emergency room for pulmonary distress on a Christmas Eve – The Article in that Yale magazine talked about Drug companies sending people into the Amazon Jungles with photographs of various diseases and rashes and other conditions, which they would show to indigenous shamen – The Shamen would look at a photograph, nod and lead the researchers to plants, roots, flowers, fruits, { – even bugs, larvae, and animals that could be prepared in some way } and indicate that these plants etc. could be used as remedies for those conditions. The article included a bit about one independent researcher who had gone the Amazon Jungle route, met with local healers and come back with recipes and examples of the remedies that could be mass produced quite inexpensively – and that researcher was very upset that a major drug company that was based in Connecticut would take a pill that had been prescribed to sheep at a penny a dose – and discover that it was effective against a condition in humans that usually needed major surgery to correct – and because that major surgery would cost in the region of $50,000 US dollars. The drug company felt well within its rights to sell that one penny per dose pill to desperate humans to the tune of $40,000. US dollars per year. I knew a junior executive who worked for the Drug company named in that article and asked him about it. His response was to send me a company newsletter that amounted to a cheer-leading {“Rah rah” ? } ‘Further adventures of our glorious CEO’ and that CEO’s glorious message to share holders.

— So, I have a little bit of insight into the corporate shenanigans that keep drug prices as high as they can get them. And I’m not really happy about it.

— One radio person from the nineteen eighties joked that Ronald Reagan would reincarnate as a single black mother on welfare as punishment for his policies and his declared war on welfare recipients. { I do not believe that God punishes anybody – I do believe in reincarnation and it is my take on the anomalies of suffering that we punish ourselves in order to become better persons and evolve toward ‘the better angels of our beings’. } I’m thinking that Pharmaceutical company executives would probably re-incarnate as innocent victims of poverty and diseases in third world countries where they will not be able to afford their medications and suffer intensely while most of the ‘civilized world’ could deal with those diseases at no cost to their citizens.

= = = = =

 

— & because I needed to check out Tarbell dot org :  From Bill Moyers dot com —> an article about Tarbell dot org: “New Website Tarbell Fights Rich And Powerful”

– Artistic Rendering by Udo J Keppler for Puck in 1904 – related to an article by Ida Tarbell. –

— Namesté,

— Jim Wellington – New Brunswick, Canada –

Wild Skies On The Road

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Sunday, June 4th, 2017  —>  16˚C / 61˚F & overcast/cloudy @ 7:36 pm Atlantic Time — Cheryl Gardiner’s & George Noory’s Birthday —

Wild Sky Ahead.

– We drove to Woodstock (New Brunswick) & back Yesterday – and traveled beneath some spectacular clowd formations and ‘interesting’ downpours yesterday. – This photo was taken at 6:27 pm yesterday –

— Yes, we had some spectacular skies to keep us interested and awake all the way to Woodstock and back. I shot about 60 photos and 47 were interesting enough to save and work with.

Rainbow in a very grey sky.

– Even when the sky was dull and/or monotonous grey – we had rainbows –

— There were times when we were under quite a dark sky and could see sunlight ahead —

hints of sunlight and rainbow.

– Maybe just a hint of sunlight ahead of us here – and with just a hint of a rainbow –

— And the play of light and shadow kept me busy with the camera while Cathi wanted to drive.

Another shot of a lot of road in deep clowd shadow and sunlight ahead.

– We did hit several areas of rain, one of them so intense we pulled of the highway and sat for about ten minutes before the rain settled down to just a bit more than a drizzle –

— And we stopped for a yummy dinner at a “Saigon” noodle & pho restaurant.

Window splat with rainbow and lots of grey and bits of sunlight.

– This was the first hint of heavy duty “Splatter” against the windshield – This one bit of storm was so intense we had to pull off the road and get away from the hydro-planing and low visibility –

— The next photo I took after the one above showed water drops splattering and bouncing high above the road, but the overall photo came out blurry.

— Sigh — ,

~~~~~ Jim ( In beautiful, green New Brunswick, Canada )

Victoria Day & The News Is Typically ‘Schnarr’ –

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Monday, May 22nd, 2017 —>  18˚C / 64˚F @1:49 pm —> Sunny outdoors beneath a steel grey sky in Atlantic Canada —> Victoria Day Holiday —

Sour Faced DJ Trump

– Donald J Trump looked like he would much rather have been undergoing root canal surgery without anesthesia as he took a few steps to the Western Wall in Jerusalem today –

— This morning’s news was typically ‘groan-worthy’ – twenty inches of snow fell in parts of Newfoundland.

— Donald J Trump is taking the Donald J Trump show on the road to Israel today, where he really looked like he would much rather be undergoing root canal surgery without any anesthesia than taking those few steps from a podium to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

— Very unscientifically, I get the feeling that the US pResident believes he is winning hearts and minds and convincing ‘everybody who matters’ that he is the greatest, most wise, most intelligent, person most worthy of being universally worshipped – as the most popular and admired president of the u.s.a. who ever was or ever could be —> All the time he obviously has no clue at all what messages he is constantly sending every intelligent, sensitive person on the planet with his body language, sneering looks, weird antics, and especially his choice of words and tone of voice every time he opens his mouth or tweets anything to anybody. His actions and presidential decrees seem to be assuring us all that he will be the most hated US President in History, and believe me, he has a lot of competition for that title.

— Meanwhile – watching a news network up here in Canada, it would be much too easy for me to jump to the conclusion that all the commercials have been carefully planned and plotted to convince everybody that they have no hope – that they have all painted themselves into a very dangerous corner with every choice and action they ever made, and they would probably be much better off if they just went away and quietly killed themselves somewhere, and should probably set themselves on fire so there would be no chance that the coming zombie apocalypse would re-animate their corpse and add a bunch of terrifying murders to their overwhelming mountains of guilt.

—  Sigh —

— I should probably quit here, but —

— While watching part of a baseball game in which he Mets were being trounced yesterday, I caught a bit of self-promotion by WPIX television in which they highlighted a news story in which a New York City Rabbi had his telephone service cut off – it hadn’t worked in months. The telephone company had been contacted constantly and hadn’t fixed the problem, didn’t even seem to have bothered trying – all the while sending bills for the services they were not delivering – so he told the phone company to cancel those services he was not receiving. They sent him a bill for $175.00 for disconnecting his telephone, which hadn’t been connected for several months. —> I hope somebody charges that telephone company with criminal fraud – demanding payment for services they never provided –

— I also spent some time wondering if their was a go-fund-me page for ninjas for hire who promised to throw acid in the faces and private parts, and cripple (knee-cap?), cut the tongues out and slice off the hands of every executive in this world who designed and/or paid others to design and implement planned obsolescence in any form.  —> Sigh, but if I found out there was such a page and/or such a group, and if I kicked in as much as one penny toward that end, I would still feel guilty and bad about the suffering of morons who had caused so many others to suffer —> Schnarr —> ya just can’t win, can ya?

— shrug — Will somebody please tell Donald J Trump that nobody who really matters gives a sh[*]t what his opinions are on any subject at all.

— Schnarr — ,

~~~~~ Jim